Year 4 and very frustrated,,,,, H E L P ! Random lights coming on...

[avery255]

So this is my 4th year and I am having a lot of new problems that I am not able to trouble shoot through. I could really use some help from others at this point.

 

First my set up. I have 32 channels on CTB16PC units and 32 channels on CMB16D-QC units. I have the Basic plus with 3.7.0 software. We moved to a new house this year and I had to totally revamp EVERYTHING!!! For my Halloween show I am only using 1 CTB16PC unit and both CMB16D-QC units for a total of 48 channels

 

My main issue: several RGB lights come on when they are not programed to.They come on at random times every time I test the sequence. Never at the same time they did the previous test...

 

My troubleshoots:

 

Checked the channels to make sure they were not accidentally programed ON.

And they are  not on not even 1%...

 

Checked for any channel assignment mistakes.

None that I could find.

 

Ran the Verifier.

Had no errors or warnings

 

Switched controllers.

had same issues with same RGB lights.

 

At this point I have no idea why these lights keep coming on.

 

Its frustrating when I put so much time and effort into my display and sequencing to only have it spoiled by a few random flickering lights. I did not have this problem in previous years and its killing me!!!

 

ANY help or advice would be VERY appreciated....

 

Steve

 

 

 

 

[Mr. P]

I had the same issue at the beginning this year and the first thing you need to check is to insure that your power cords and data cords are not running together. Maker sure they are separated at least a foot apart as the electrical field around your power cords can affect the data flow in your data cables causing erratic or random flashes.

[Don]

Run the Verifier. That will look for many things. It may just find the problem for you.

 

Are you running a background sequence? If so, make sure the channels that are being used for the background sequence are not even configured in the rest of your sequences. 

[Jeff Messer]

Check you cat 5 connections real close. I cant find the link on here but its a spray you can use to help with connections and cleaning. Noted you said RGB is coming on so what color are they when they come on. Left over red on top of the black in the sequence is very hard to see.

[Dennis Laff]

Check your patch cables had same problem last when a cable went bad. best thing to do is buy a cat 5 cable checker

[Jeff Messer]

Yes the first cable from your 485 connector at your computer is a great start. My show had things popping on and off and the very first cable was the issue.

[Jim Hans]

One way to test your cables is to only connect one controller to the computer and run it.  Everything OK?  Add the second contrller... everything OK?  keep adding until all are connected and working fine or until you find the one you added that causes the problem.  Now yu can narrow it down to the cat 5 or the controller.  Change out the cat 5... Did that fix it.  You get the idea.  Break your problem down into little bites to trouble shoot. 

[avery255]

First off....thanks for all the help!

 

Mr P- I assume you mean the power cords to the controllers and the cat 5 cabel and not the power cords running from the controllers to the lights. If I am correct then I will be making sure they are seperated. As far as the cords from the controller to the lights they are all zip tied together as they make there way to the controllers.

 

Don- I have run the Verifier and it only comes up with channels off error. I have several chanels that I'm not using so that is normal as far as I know. However I will be checking the background effects....didnt even think of that....

 

Jeff, Dennis and Jim- Will be checking the CAT5 cabels tonight...

 

Again thanks for all the input and will keep you posted...

 

Steve

[avery255]

Don- as i just started looking at my sequences it donned on me (no pun intended)  that the lights come on at different times each time the sequence is played so I don't think background effects are to blame...

[Don]

For what it's worth, having a channel defined in both a normal sequence and a background sequence will yield unpredictable results.

[dgrant]

I had something happen this year too in that when I ran the sequence editor, the songs/lights worked perfectly. But when I enabled the show player, things did not work right at all as in, things on and off at different times and different colors on RGB strips or not on/off when they weren't suppose to be. Turned out, I had to change the show player configuration to load sequences before they were played as opposed to when they were played. I do not know why this made the difference but it did and things worked normally.

[CLD Kevin]

I had 2 customers run into a similar situation. Both cases turned out to be a corrupted sequence file. Even though the channels looked completely off....lights would run random at time. I had both create a completely new sequence and cut and paste into it. Worked for one....the other not so much and they had to redo just those problem channels.

[Jeff Messer]

That dark red color and black is hard to see for sure.

[avery255]

I agree it's hard to see the dark red but I've gone through and made sure they are all off! The issue is they never come on at the same point in the sequence...

[CLD Kevin]

Awww.....forgot to mention that too. I had another customer (just recently) that had random effect and lag. Come to find out he made all his own cat5 and was not making to standard Ethernet pin-out. He was just pairing colors together. After remaking them all....issue gone. Let's hope that is the problem.

Edited October 26, 2014 by CLD Kevin

[avery255]

S U C C E S S ! ! !

Turns out the 4 new cat5 cabels were all wired wrong! Wired up my own today and problem solved!

Thanks again everyone for taking the time to help in trying to trouble shoot my problem when I'm sure you all had better things to do.

I'm very greatfull...

Kevin-glad your show is back up and running again. I live in the Sacramento area and saw it on the local news a few nights ago. Truth be told I saw a YouTube video of yours in 2011 and that's what hooked me! I'm sure I'm not the only one you have inspired so thank you.

Again thanks for taking the time to help me out!

Will try and post a video this week

[CLD Kevin]

S U C C E S S ! ! !

Turns out the 4 new cat5 cabels were all wired wrong! Wired up my own today and problem solved!

Thanks again everyone for taking the time to help in trying to trouble shoot my problem when I'm sure you all had better things to do.

I'm very greatfull...

Kevin-glad your show is back up and running again. I live in the Sacramento area and saw it on the local news a few nights ago. Truth be told I saw a YouTube video of yours in 2011 and that's what hooked me! I'm sure I'm not the only one you have inspired so thank you.

Again thanks for taking the time to help me out!

Will try and post a video this week

Glad you here able to get it working!!

I'm not a happy camper today. Shut down permanently again tonight :-(

[dgrant]

Glad you here able to get it working!!

I'm not a happy camper today. Shut down permanently again tonight :-(

So what's going on with your's? Comm not getting through or delay issues or what? We are here to help each other or at least offier suggestions. If I still lived in Rancho, I'd be happy to attempt to help you locally but I'm now 1500 miles away.

[Box on Rails]

Dave, Kevin is having a Poe poe issue. lol 

 

I've been having similar issues with RGBs coming on randomly. Frist thing this morning gonna check all the Cat5 cables.

 

Here is a wierd one that happened last night. Everything was going haywire last night. The show started up normal but when I went out to see it with a friend who had come over nothing was in sync. some of the lights were not coming on and complete controllers were not coming on then all of a sudden everything was working then 10 seconds later half the CCP strands were out the the CMB24 stopped working and 10 seconds latter they're all working again. and this was happening through the entire sequence. so I open the garage to check the computer for possible issues and then I notice all the controllers status lights are blinking. so I use the disable show immediately tool. after that I enabled the show again and all status lights go solid and the show started up and played just fine for the rest of the night. Any of you guys experience this and if so how did you resolve it? 

 

Kenny Jure

Edited October 27, 2014 by Box on Rails

[dgrant]

I ran into a small issue last year. If the computer was turned on, show player enabled, BEFORE, the controllers were powered up (last year by timer), then it would have similar problems. When I made sure the controllers were on first, then the problem wasn't there. Not saying this is what's going on this year as for all I know, there might be something in the software itself. It could easily be a RS485 connection not quite seated or intermittent connection which would do the same things. I would be looking closely with a magnifying glass and flashlight, at each and every RJ45 connector on each controller to insure the pins were in their proper place and not contaminated. Might use a good Q-Tip and alcohol too on each.

Edited October 27, 2014 by dgrant